


this is what it's like living in limbo

by scullyseviltwin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: John-centric, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/pseuds/scullyseviltwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a holding period.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to Dennis for his nitpicking, to Robyn for her cheerleading and to Caitlin for helping me with some of the finer points, although Sherlock is not her fandom. 
> 
> Also to Dennis for what almost became the summary, "In which John feels feelings."
> 
> Title from "Wild," by Poe.

His brain actually has to play catch up; everything slows, molasses thick and he’s underwater and a thousand different metaphors for not being of right mind and body. Limbs heavy, heart racing but somehow, miraculously _stopped_ and everything drags and hangs and pulls from moment to moment.

It is gray, nearly everything is gray and it takes a long beat before John’s eyes stop rolling in his head and he’s able to gaze on the scene properly. A quiet sort of spectacular carnage. He imagines Sherlock, for a second, a fraction of- _”Oh John, oh brilliant, look at this... this_ madness _!” tearing off towards the stained sidewalk with confident, excited strides._

He sees Sherlock seeing his own crime scene. And, bloody fuck...

The hands on his body push and pull, away, away, away and all he can see is a heap on the ground (his friend, his friend, oh fuck, god, Sherlock _no_ ) and if he lets himself, he’ll believe this is all a nightmare. If he lets himself, he’ll sink fast into a delusion he can easily create, right here, on the spot, that the sickening splat and cracking of bones was not his friend. That it had been someone else, somehow wearing Sherlock’s face, somehow, some way.

It’s all too real and he can’t process what has happened; he understands while at the very same time, he does not. Mere moments ago-and they’re slipping away now, the seconds to minutes and before he knows it, it’s all become the past, too-he’d been speaking with Sherlock, voices being bounced to each other, from satellites though they were really only meters apart. If he’d known then that this was going to happen, that his best friend was going to splay himself on the pavement, John would have found the courage...

He would have had to, dug down deep and clawed out, unearthed all of the things he had ever, _ever_ wished Sherlock to hear. (And my, my, there were many.) _Would have, could have_ , should have. The words now echo within his head, pingponging, ringing. _“Tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.”_ And it feels like they were spoken a century ago, eons ago, in another world, another realm.

He won’t believe it, he can’t. It’s not _in him to_.

John doesn’t have the mental ability to deceive himself now and instead, buckles at the waist and is sick all over the slick cobblestones beneath him.

He blacks out.

\---

In the service, John had been made to understand that while it was important to bond with his comrades at arms, it was equally as critical not to allow them to become too close, too intimate. The emotionless reason being that a soldier should keep one’s head and heart clear and uncompromised for combat; the real reason was that no one knew who would be lying dead on the battlefield at the end of the day.

It wasn’t death itself, it was the carnage. Bullets that had torn through someone’s body, brain matter, missing limbs. Slow, slow painful deaths. Not antiseptic, flurrying slipping away like in the A & E; stark, bright pain and too much noise. Terror belaying terror. It was the sort of death that he was not used to.

And things were easier when you had no attachment to the soldier whose arm you were trying in vain to torniquete. John had, of course understood the need for such detachment but found it difficult to adhere to such strictures, being so inclined to form bonds with others.

It had taken a very real toll on him, then, when he lost a man in his unit to suicide and three others in a downed chopper and John began to ingrain in his mind the notion of detachment, both medical and emotional. John squeezes his eyes shut hard and tight and swallows every time one of them is lost but he no longer frets, no longer cries. He _feels it all_ , deep inside. John picks himself up and carries on, brave face for all of the world.

Deep inside is where it remains and festers and John goes about his duties. He carries it all back to London with him and it manifests into nightmares, sleepless and sweaty nights awake against his sheets.

The nightmares ebb when he meets Sherlock, just like that. They come to him, sometimes, but not as bright, not as vivid, not as close.

That should have been the first clue, John thinks to himself as he slips the tail of his tie through the loop and pulls it taught. There’s no point in examining himself in the mirror, but it’s perfunctory. John stares back at a man gaunt, lost, helpless but with the demeanor of a soldier standing at attention.

 _As always; old habits and such_.

He’ll face this like all the others, he decides. There’s more room for the grief now; back in the army he’d learn to compartmentalize each death, tuck it away. Now, after so long with so little to grieve as of late there was a vast cavern within him.

But even that would not hold the death of his friend, he isn’t sure anything rightly would and on the way down the steps to meet Lestrade, John punches a wall, hard, breaks three bones in his hand.

_”John, you have to know, I never, I didn’t...” the Detective Inspector had said when he’d come calling. “I didn’t...”_

_And John forgave, forgot so easily._

_“I still...” Greg tried but could finish the sentence ‘believe him to be innocent,’ so John had simply nodded at him, invited him up for tea which neither of them had drank while neither of them had spoken._

His hand swells, purples. He curls it into himself as he makes his way out onto the street, tosses himself into Greg’s car without care. Lestrade asks in a low tone if he’s alright and John answers, “I don’t... believe I am, no.”

Greg bites his lip and swallows audibly. “No, I expect not.”

It’s raining (how could it not be) at the gravesite and the mourners are all silent, all wanting to ignore the others there. It must be difficult, John thinks, for some of them to be here, to admit to having known the man. To have respected him enough to show their faces while the paparazzi wait impatiently behind a police barricade, eager to witness the mourning.

Donovan and Anderson stand beneath a large oak tree, toward the back of the group and something in John breaks, then. They’re both frowning, as though their faces have any other way to fall; it’s what’s in their eyes. Disbelief, shame, rage and something John might call sorrow linger there. “Donovan,” John whispers and Greg hears, turning to look over his shoulder.

“I don’t... I dunno, John,” he whispers back, his shoulder brushing the doctor’s. He’s close; John’s shocked that he somehow finds that notion comforting.

The world’s only consulting detective is not delivered to the mourners in a pine box. Instead, a man John has never seen before recites _Ozymandias_ and he thinks that maybe Sherlock would have liked this.

He liked Shelley, of that John is sure.

John doesn’t wonder who chose the reading, or who is doing the reading, or what the reading means. He thinks about Sherlock, and how his voice would have sounded, reciting the words.

No one says a word. John recalls how he was not allowed to view the body, how Mycroft had taken it upon himself to make the arrangements, the cremation ( _”By fire!_ Sherlock had once gasped at a private viewing of a body and John finally understands) and he wants to curse at someone for his lack of involvement.

But the malice is superficial; he’s not feeling much of anything, right now. Just a simple gaping, clawing emptiness in his chest.

There is nothing of note about the service; it happens. It’s over, everyone leaves.

Everyone leaves.

\---

John makes almost no effort over the next few days, though he makes it a point to attempt to cancel _The Sun_ and _The Times_ ; he doesn’t want to read about it, doesn’t want to see the manner in which the press has sensationalized Sherlock’s death.

When he finally gets a live representative on the line it’s, “I’m sorry, Mr. Watson, your subscription has already been terminated. Thank you for your readership over the years.”

John fails to mention that it’s only been one year and not multiple that he’s had such a subscription and thus their pleasantries are utter rubbish, because he’s thinking that Mycroft is the only person who would do such a thing as to cancel the papers for him.

Once again, taking it upon himself to do _what he believes is right_. The simple thought that Mycroft is still meddling, still believes he has any sway or influence or say in what happens in John’s life is maddening, truly, and it sets him completely on edge.

There’s a simmering hate that radiates from his belly to his limbs and he sets his jaw; in a moment it dissipates.

John doesn’t hate Mycroft.

He nothings, him.

And that’s worse, he thinks, isn’t it?

For two days, John simply sits in his armchair in front of the cold and quiet hearth and stares off into nothingness, feeling nothing for _everything_.

\---

John waits four days before tidying up the flat. He packs nothing away, but brings a few things back to Sherlock’s room and tucks them away in the closet:

His well-worn copy of _Grey’s Anatomy_  
dressing gown  
a few collections of test tubes  
violin  
sheet music  
music stand  
the very last experiment Sherlock had worked on, that is to say, a jar of calf eyeballs

When he closes the door on Sherlock’s possessions, John releases a breath he didn’t know he’s been holding; it leads to a long inhale and Sherlock is all around him, his scent, his presence, buzzing in his veins. Shaky legs hurry him from the room and John fist grips the doorknob so hard that it’s painful and he slams the door so loudly that the windows rattle.

John mobilizes.

He makes quick work, scrubbing down the kitchen, putting the disarray back into some semblance of order. The refrigerator is given a thorough once-over, all with mindless intensity. The crisper drawer is ripped from the unit and washed clean in the sink; he carefully extracts the shelves and washes those as well. The freezer is mercifully lacking in any of Sherlock’s experiments.

The toaster is wiped of grease and crumbs, the kettle rinsed and rinsed again; John gets rid of the microwave. It’s unsalvageable and besides, he much prefers using the oven to warm. The cupboards are perused, expired food tossed in the bin (of which there is too much, just another reminder of the times Sherlock didn’t eat.)

When he’s satisfied with the kitchen, he stands to survey his work. It’s only then that he realizes he’s been crying, all the while.

He has to leave.

\---

Leaving turns out to be packing a duffle and staying on Mike Stamford’s couch for a time. It’s nice enough and Mike’s wife Midge is sweet as can be, understanding and “John, could you use another blanket?,” “The shower is all yours,” “How’d you take your coffee, hon?”

It’s fine, it’s pleasant, he hates it.

It’s _boring_ John finds himself thinking and that, as it turns out, is possibly the worst thing to think because that singular word has more meaning to him than most of his known vocabulary strung together. “Oh, jesus,” he says one evening as he thinks it.

There’s no stopping the pull of his imagination, of exactly the kind of things Sherlock would say given he had the chance to look upon John’s situation. “Dreadful, John. Painfully boring. I cannot articulate the depths to which I would loathe the situation if it were I in your position.”

John laughs, John cries.

Mike glances at him out of the corner of his eye, “John?”

“I, just... yeah,” the tears subside on a laugh and John’s head falls into his open hands. “I need a job, need, need something.” John really does need for a lot of things, but he wants for none of them, wouldn’t know how to ask for them if he did.

Mike nods and folds up the evening paper. “What you need right now, mate, is to get well and truly pissed,” comes the suggestion and John nods.

Yes, yes, that sounds about right.

\---

Mike is the one person he admits it to.

“I think, you know, when it comes right down to it, there was... I loved the man, Mike.” And it’s not a shock, although it is a brand new revelation, something he’d never really considered before, something he’d never put words to. John ponders it for a moment, the notion that he loves a man and well, he takes it in stride.

John Watson loves a man.

That man is dead.

Mike’s eyes blow wide for a beat or two but he absorbs the information and slides a fresh pint in front of John. “I can’t say it was romantic but... but maybe it was? I don’t... it’s not something I understand.” John drinks and drinks and stares at Mike, eyes bleary, ignoring the people in the bar who gape, who recognize him from the papers. “But, I love him.”

Present tense.

Mike says, “Mate, s’not a _bad_ thing.”

John shakes his head. “It’s the _worst_ ,” and a sob presses itself against his windpipe. “And the best.”

\---

Mrs. Hudson nearly begs him, begs him twenty-two days after the funeral to return to the gravesite with her. “There are things... things I need to say dear and... if you could... oh would you,” and John buckles, acquiesces, hangs up the phone and pulls on his heavy jacket.

He’s back to Baker Street in a short amount of time, though time for him lately has become a very fluid construct. It could have taken months to cross from one side of London to the other and John wouldn’t have bothered to notice.

She hugs him tightly when she answers the door, offers him tea which he declines and he asks if they could please just... just.

Mrs. Hudson nods both sympathetically and thankfully and shrugs on her light coat.

“Alright, then.” John hails a cab, feels the hole in his chest opening further and further.

The service seems like a distant blur although it was only a fortnight previous. But years and years have passed, haven’t they? John hails a cab with a surprisingly steady hand, holding the door open for his landlady. “And in you go,” he finds himself saying, but the voice that emanates from his throat isn’t his.

It’s some other man’s. A man that is fading away.

“John, dear,” she takes his hand and squeezes it hard (harder than he would have thought she could possibly squeeze) anchoring him to the moment. No thinking about that now, about slipping away, he has to be strong for her.

Neither of them look at the other on the way to the cemetery, neither speak a word. Everything feels like an epilogue. There’s one last page to turn and John can’t seem to fathom closing the book. His lungs fill with the impossible heave of a sigh and he’s glad for the cabbie bleating his horn just as he releases the breath.

It wracks him, right down to his bones.

He pays the driver, although Mrs. Hudson clucks at him for doing so, and he helps her out of the car, pushes the heavy iron gate open and lets it bang closed behind them. John saunters in front of her for a moment before turning on his heel and taking her frail hand in his. “It’s...” he begins but that is _all wrong_.

“S’alright dear,” she says quietly and guides him along the rocky path, back, back, far back into the cemetery. Around them, birds chirp merrily as the sparse other mourners stand at the graves of their loved ones, speaking in low tones.

“They can’t hear you!” John wants to scream. “They’ll never hear you again!”

Mrs. Hudson stumbles in a divot and John steadies her and they make it the last few meters to the grave; the sleek black memorial catching a bit of sun and reflecting it into John’s line of vision.

“Go, you go ahead,” John whispers and he stands back, far back, far enough away that he will not overhear what she is saying to the man who gave her so much. Her hands flurry about, pause, are back to flurrying. John watches her, his eyes prickling but he won’t give in, he won’t allow himself too. She takes a long time, a long time. The sun has shifted in the sky when she glances over her shoulder at him and makes a “Well, come on, then,” gesture with her hand.

John takes the cue, walks over, finding himself numbing with every step.

She smiles sadly and bites her lip before saying, “There’s all the stuff, all the science equipment. I left it all in boxes. I don’t know what needs doing. I thought I’d take it to a school. “Would you...?”

“...I can’t go back to the flat again, not at the moment.”

She recounts the horror of living with Sherlock but there is a lilt to her voice, as though she misses it. Misses popping upstairs to see what her boys have gotten themselves into. And of course she does; she loves Sherlock just as he does. He knows that it’s killing her.

“I’m really not that angry, you know,” John finds himself saying and it comes out all wrong, all wrong but he doesn’t have it in him to make it sound _right_ and would it even matter?

“I’ll leave you alone to, erm... you know,” and away she goes, her tiny little hiccoughs of sobs fading as she retreats.

John wants to beg off, doesn’t want to put words to his thoughts, but at her urging, he finds himself taking a step forward. He finds it difficult, staring down at the headstone, has to swallow significantly a few times but when he reads the name etched there, there’s is a fantastic punch to his gut.

\---

John believes that this would all be so much better if he could manage to properly grieve. Maybe he’ll buy a book on the subject.

\---

Sally comes calling on a Sunday and John has half a mind to slam the door in her face upon opening it to her.

“I know,” she begins, animatedly and then dials it back. Both of her hands are shoved into the pockets of her oversized parka and she seems very small and insignificant. “I know, I’m one of the very last people you want to see right now-”

He finds his hand tightening on the handle of the door. “Certainly at the bottom of the list, yes,” John grinds out.

“But I have something... there’s something, jesus, I shouldn’t be here, but Greg-” her voice wavers and she can’t look him in the eye, so she casts a glance towards the traffic meandering down Baker Street.

“Last I heard you’re the reason that Greg is on _suspension_ ,” John manages to say, padding his voice slightly, giving her the opportunity to make her case.

Sally swallows and has enough sense to look thoroughly guilty. “Sherlock’s phone we...” she holds up the evidence bag in a hand that quivers. “Greg thought I should come round and tell you, he managed to figure out the password on Sherlock’s phone and-”

“What was it?” John demands.

Sally shuffles into the hallway and gently shuts the door behind her, blinking, seeing if it’s alright. John takes a step back and he’s against the wall. “It was Greg’s name, it seems, I mean, what.... I think Sherlock wanted us to find this. I mean, he did want us to find this, he just... wanted to be certain that it was someone he could trust.”

John’s jaw sets. “What of it? What’s on the phone.”

Sally swallows and glances down at her feet. “On the, the roof. James Moriarty’s... confession.”

“Confession?”

“Sherlock recorded... he set his phone to record. There’s all of it, before he-proof of Moriarty’s...”

John stood, eyes hard though he so badly wanted to gape at her. The truth, the truth he knew, there in recorded form. Exonerating, alleviating proof.

Sally bit off her words and finished. “Of Moriarty.”

She doesn’t apologize and he doesn’t wait for her to, just demands, “Play it,” and she does, fingers maneuvering the phone through thin plastic.

\---

It takes a lot, nearly all of his emotional willpower and days and days of talking to himself. It takes hours of pacing and moments of tossing his fist into things _very_ solid but John, in the end, does not blame himself.

It would be incredibly easy to.

But Sherlock wouldn’t have wanted that, of this he is sure.

And it’s always been about what Sherlock wanted and needed, anyway.

 

\---

The table is wobbly and John intentionally rocks it back and forth, wondering why he’d bothered crossing London to come here. Here of all places. John nudges his foot beneath the leg for a moment, steadying it, and then leaves it to rock again.

He watches as the flame on the candle feels the pull and flickers with the force of the air around it. John almost fractures, right then, watches the people meandering the street outside and tries to forget to feel for a moment.

Angelo makes his way over, quiet, says nothing of the Doctor dining alone. The larger man leans over to remove the second set of cutlery, a set of cutlery that Sherlock had only once deigned to put to use in John’s presence. A calloused hand shoots out, closes around the napkin-enshrouded fork and knife. “Just... just leave it, please.”

Angelo pulls back, doesn’t look at John but John sees the tremor in the man’s hand and knows that he too is swallowing grief. “Wine?” the proprietor asks and John simply nods.

“All of the wine in the world,” he wants to ask of the man, but doesn’t.

John sits and drinks alone for a long, long time. He thinks of the twelve steps and how drinking alone with his family’s history probably isn’t the wisest of ideas. He shouts down his mental demons to piss off and leave him be, just for now.

Just for a _bit_.

\---

John recalls the first instance. Of.

The first instance _of_.

A cold afternoon, a consulting detective stretched languidly over the entire expanse of couch. John in his chair, the chair that had come to be known as his. A thoroughly unremarkable day, truly.

A date, on the horizon, not really soon, more later and John had made a casual reference to it, to being busy on the evening of the thirteenth and thus, “No running about with _you_ that night.”

Sherlock had bitten at the opportunity to once more admonish John for the manner in which he chose to spend his free time. “I have utterly no idea why you insist on... on dating so... eagerly. If it’s simply desire to get-”

“Sherlock, contrary to popular belief dating isn’t just about ‘getting off,’ it’s the getting to know another person, enjoying another person’s company, liking the person and hopefully, eventually, somehow managing to love them.” the words slip off of John’s tongue and he thinks, ‘yes, concise, good, remarkable really’ and spares a quick glance at his flatmate.

“ _Love_ them.” It’s not exactly a question, but John is aware that Sherlock is confused.

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, to be, be happy. Eventually. That would be most people’s endgame, begin with dating, finish with love, marriage. Or, well, begin _again_ really with love and marriage. But essentially the end game is to fall in love.”

“That is not _my_ end game.” Obviously.

“Obviously,” John huffs and takes up the paper. “But for most of the rest of the world, Sherlock, it is. There you have it, mystery solved.” John’s voice is soft, as though not to imply that his disassociation with “the rest of the world,” make him less than, or less than normal.

(John is _kind_ and _considerate_ in that regard.)

“Far from solved, John. Love is such... an arbitrary term. There is of course the obvious reaction in the human body which when-”

“Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, adrenaline-serotonin-dopamine but... hm, how to put this so you’ll understand you absolute git?” John’s voice holds a note of irritation but he actually finds it almost... endearing that Sherlock is positively clueless about such an integral part of the human condition. “Ah, imagine finding the person with whom you would never, ever be bored. Not in a million years.”

“Nonsense, John,” Sherlock brushes off the idea, his hand waving lazily in the air. Sherlock’s eyes are still fixed on the ceiling. “That is in fact the purpose you serve.”

The air escapes John’s lungs but he fights not to seek the meaning in Sherlock’s words. “Good to know I’m around to ensure you’re never _bored_ ,” and John’s eyes roll dramatically even as his heart hammers in his chest and his throat tightens and he begs his mind not to begin racing. “So you’re not bored right now, then. Crap telly and nothing in to eat and no plans for the rest of the evening but to sleep?”

Sherlock turns his head, just his head. His hands remain clasped against his stomach. “Hmmmm, no.” It’s all he says, goes back to ruminating about whatever it is that he’s ruminating about.

“Right, right.”

It’s the first instance of John’s heart hammering in his chest in a way that is thoroughly different from any other manner in which it had attempted beating faster than usual.

\---

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Harry mentions to him, months, months later, over coffee. It’s a phrase that should be patronizing and it should be broken-record thin in its truth, but.

Well.

He sees the point in that, really. Not that John in any way feels bolstered for his friend’s sacrifice but there’s a calm sort of awakening in it. John has admitted things to himself that he’s admitted to no one else, he’s realized things lurking just beneath the surface of his soul.

He faces these, one by one and accepts them intrinsically as they are now parts of him:

_I would have gone anywhere with him_  
He could have had all of me, if only he’d asked  
I would have faced down death in his stead (he never would have asked)  
I would have continued on loving him quietly, without really knowing, until the end of our days  
I do not love Sherlock Holmes; I am a bit of a madman, in an after-the-fact sort of way and am in very sharp relief in love with the man  
Sherlock Holmes is now past tense while I am still in present tense 

John adds a third sugar to a coffee he hasn’t even sipped from and turns his attention to the snowflakes drifting outside. This is the longest winter he’s ever lived through and he doesn’t really mind if it doesn’t end for years and years. It’s quieter this way. “I suppose it does,” John answers his sister truthfully, quietly.

Harry’s lips are set in a thin line and she reaches over to smooth a hand over his. “Oh, love, you’ll make it through.”

“I know,” John replies.

“It feels crushing and hopeless, I know, but you’ll make it through.”

John sets his lips in a thin line as well, wonders if he resembles his sister. “I always do,” he answers.

 

\---

John manages Mike’s couch for an entire month and then finds an old army buddy who needs a housesitter. He manages _that_ for two months.

And then he returns to 221b.

Mrs. Hudson had tidied up considerably. There is no longer soot on the windows, and the rugs have all been replaced. She’s done nothing about the bullet holes in the wall, or the scorch marks in the kitchen.

John makes a mental note to thank her for her consideration.

John makes tea.

\---

The second instance _of_ was sharp and electrifying and wholly unexpected.

Sherlock had been nowhere in sight when Anderson had said, “Holmes is insane, well and truly and if-”

And John had cut him off, stepping into the criminalist’s face, jutting his jaw in anger. “Solved this on your own, could you?” Anderson had the sense to look startled and took a step back. “Shut your bloody mouth before I find it within me to assure that you can’t speak at all..”

Anderson blinked.

John took a step back and smiled, deadly. “Yes?”

Anderson blinked again.

“Good,” John does an about face and catches Sherlock staring at him, looking to all the world unaffected, save for the set of his shoulders and it hits John then, that this is more than _everything_ he originally thought it to be.

\---

There is a holding period.

He eventually finds employment at a surgery in Ealing.

John allows himself to find that he actually enjoys the work.

He doesn’t love it, but it’s something.

\---

Molly has lunch with him. That is to say, Molly sits across from him and picks at her salad and pushes the tomatoes around on her plate and won’t meet his eyes. The first few times, he finds it odd, but now it’s just old hat. She is sallow and fatigued and when she smiles there’s always a flicker of something else behind it. They chat idly, about nothing and more nothing and she almost always insists on picking up the bill.

Some sort of misplaced guilt, he supposes, though he’s not entirely sure why.

The mere fact that Molly was smitten with Sherlock could have been it, sure, but the way she snaps her gaze away from his when he catches her staring, it’s unsettling.

“Anything interesting in, recently?” John asks, popping a chip into his mouth, not so much caring about the answer but needing to break the silence.

Molly shrugs and takes a sip of her tap water. “Electrocution. My first, actually. Gent dropped a hair dryer in the tub while his wife was bathing. On purpose. Ghastly.” She pauses for a moment, adds, “Horrific but...”

“Interesting?”

“Yes, I suppose.” She drains her glass and he won’t stop staring at her. He can’t... he can’t... there’s something itching at the back of his mind, a question he can’t begin to comprehend, one he doesn’t even know to ask, but it’s there.

They finish, neither one of them having eaten much at all.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” John says as he holds the door for her, sliding his sunglasses on. It’s warm and lovely outside but John feels cold, wind-beaten and battered.

Molly twirls to face him. Lip bitten, fingers clutching the strap of her bag, she says, “No John, I’m not,” even as her head tilts in the phantom of a nod.

The sun shines on.

\---

The third and the most real instance _of_.

“This is my life,” John said, out of the blue, midway to adding sugar to his tea. His words were soft, rounded with wonder and confusion.

“Pardon?” Sherlock glanced up from buttering his toast.

John shrugged, “This is... my life. So, I mean, forever.” John meant that Baker Street was it; mad dashes through the alleys of London; danger and sweat and a man he can’t actually fathom living independently of. And to acknowledge this, out loud.

Sherlock blinked. “Splendid.”

The smile he gave was genuine and had reached all the way to his eyes and John had stepped forward, placed his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and-

Squeezed.

\---

Lestrade is reinstated to the force (not back to his old position, no hope for that) after a lengthy hearing that bleeds over the course of three days. Sally presents the most pertinent of the information. What was on Sherlock’s phone, the ballistics from Moriarty’s gun, the proof of the gunshot residue naming his death positively a suicide.

They pore over Greg Lestrade’s entire career with a fine-toothed comb.

John is afraid he will be called as a witness, but blessedly he is not. He sits in the back of the hearing room for all three sessions, keeping his head down and his profile low. He doesn’t want to turn this into more of a media circus than it already is. The room is bright and antiseptic and Lestrade looks ten years older and Sally looks as though she hasn’t slept in weeks (rightly so, John thinks) but eventually internal affairs gives in and hands back his badge and tells him to pick up his firearm at the appropriate office.

And that is that.

“Up for a pint?” John asks when he snags Greg’s attention, two blocks from the Yard.

He’s startled at first, “Oi, John I-”

“Congrats, mate, I mean, things considered,” John holds out his hand and Greg takes it, releasing a pent-up breath it seems he does not know he is holding. “‘s good, right?” There’s a beat and Greg dips his head and positively beams.

“Brilliant, yeah. It’s...” John motions with a tip of his head and they begin walking down the sidewalk. “It’s as though, I’m not on the job, I’m sort of... lost.” Greg shrugs, laughs. “It’s not healthy, I’m sure but if I’m not on the job, I’m not sure where I fit in. Even if it's not... I'm not a D.I. any longer but, well...”

“In the grand scheme of things?” John laughs and leads them down the next block.

Greg returns the laugh, “Yeh.”

They end up at a pub near King’s Cross and though it’s midday, the place is filled with co-eds grabbing a pre-calculus, post-sixteenth century english literature drink. The men find a table in the back, not so much tucked in a corner so much as forced there. Their beers are tepid which is fine and they sip at them, long, for a few moments before either one bothers to speak.

John feels neither put upon or rushed and for the first time since he stopped counting time there’s something inside of him that feels nearly content.

There’s also something inside of him that feels guilty about this. He makes it a point to shrug it off; he _needs_ to set some things back to normal. He needs to feel fine, seeing a friend for drinks. He needs to be fine about seeing Greg. He needs to stop thinking about Sherlock Holmes. Every other thought can no longer be about Sherlock Holmes.

“Sally came to see me, awhile back,” John mentions because he needs to stop thinking, and he wants to ask Greg what is going to happen with _his_ partnership. “She said you-”

“Yes, I... thought it might be a _gesture_ ,” Greg screws up his face in disgust but it soon melts to a sad smile. “She’s on a ‘making it up to me,’ pitch and I can’t say that I’m not enjoying it.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

Greg stares at his pint and sets his shoulders, glances over at his friend. “I can’t blame her. I just can’t find it in me to.” Greg swallows. “We’re partners.”

“It’s not her fault,” John finds himself saying and for a split second he wonders ‘Who the hell said that!?’ “It’s Jim Moriarty’s.”

Greg nods. Greg waits. “You see any of the news coverage?”

John shrugs. “Was hard not to. Dimmock was surprisingly... concise in the press conference. Handled it well. Thought they were a little heavy on the Sherlock-as-tragic-hero-angle...” The pulling in his chest is back and his stomach rolls and everything burns. The rest of his pint is hastily swallowed, stemming the tide of bile threatening to rise in his throat.

“Well, he was a hero,” Greg says with conviction. “Is, come to think of it.”

John’s throat is so, so tight. All of that hard work, undone, he ponders. “Is?”

“Glass half full, John,” Greg reasons. “Has to be that way.”

And John thinks that yes, if he’s going to continue living at all, it does indeed have to be that way.

\---

Sometimes, John finds himself speaking to the skull, mentioning that the hydro bill is due or that it’s a bank holiday on Monday. He finds himself using the skull as a conduit, a sort of ‘if-Sherlock-could-hear-me-I-would-say.’ They’re out of milk, the woman he’s seeing is a complete pill but she’s good in bed and “If only I’d had the sense of mind to try and take you to bed, Sherlock Holmes.”

That shocks him a little, the notion that floats through his mind; it’s not foreign and _that_ is what shocks him. The realization that he’s thought about this a million times but hasn’t ever actually consciously pondered it. Well. If only he’d had the presence of mind to think about it in the first place.

John finds himself wondering what it would have been like, if he’d managed to divest the consulting detective of all of his clothing and press him against the sheets.

That’s a moot point, because John doesn’t think that would have occurred if certain things had not happened previous. Namely, John admitting his obscenely romantic feelings for his flatmate, his unbearably painful love for the man.

That too is a moot point because John is a tragic figure and didn’t realize the nature of his emotions towards the man before it was too late and over and never even begun. He thinks; there’s a timeline to unravel, here.

The entire notion that John is thinking about having taken Sherlock Holmes to bed leads to him laying in his own bed at night and rewriting their history in his head. Much of it is the same, but he tries to read more into a sidelong glance, casually inserts a few fleeting touches on his part, a weakening in his knees at Sherlock’s scent. He rewrites their history as something entirely too romantic and realizes, some time around dawn that all of this was happening around them, all along.

Fuck, damn.

All of those months.

And they’d both ignored it for reasons he couldn’t understand.

John almost feels the skull rolling his eyes at him, from the living room. The skull has seen everything between them, why did he, she, it never say anything?

John is a maniac; he laughs himself to sleep.

\---

No one calls it an anniversary because that term has happier connotations for everyone. No one speaks about it, really. Greg mentions, “I’m going by on Saturday, if you’d like.”

John declines.

He received a short message from Mycroft, ‘For what it is worth, Sherlock had a particular affinity for white trillium.’ He thinks it’s not worth much, actually, and grumbles about it as he calls all of the florists in London trying to determine what he’s looking for and is barked at by a woman, who tells him it’s a wildflower and it’s not native to Britain.

Of course. Of course.

Even in death, he’s on a wild goose chase for Sherlock..

He ends up paying a hefty sum, in tracking some down. There’s a greenhouse in Chiswick that is willing to part with the flower and John muses to himself, as he carries away a small bundle of white, lilly-esque flowers, that Sherlock’s death has cost him a lot, but now he can put a price on it.

Eighty-three pounds.

He lays them on the ground next to Mrs. Hudson’s comically large bouquet of carnations and when she’s out of earshot, tells the headstone what an utter wanker it is and just how long it took John to find these damned flowers and so Sherlock had best enjoy them.

\---

It all sort of blurs after that. He breaks up with Zoe and meets a woman named Mary who is actually quite remarkable and sparks something in him that he hasn’t felt in a long while. He courts her gently.

They picnic and go to the cinema and it’s the most normal that John has felt in ages and ages. They spend an evening at the British Museum just meandering.

She’s very well-informed on Islamic art and he loves just listening to her speak about it.

When John kisses Mary for the first time, be feels the fluttering of something in his stomach. There is a voice within him that is trying to tell him that this is really all just wrong, but he ignores it. When he kisses her again, the voice harrumphs and crosses its arms and lets it happen.

Just for once, John wants to be happy.

Mary bats her eyelashes and winds her arm through his and they stroll along the Thames, all film-romance and sleepy happiness. He walks her all the way home, all five miles; they chat and laugh and kiss the entire way. He almost wishes they would get caught in the rain because that would clinch it, it would be a perfect evening, something that a screenwriter would try to imagine.

Mary invites him in and he demurs, as a gentleman. This is only their fourth date and John won’t admit to himself that he’s stalling. He’s stalling for reasons that are both all-too-familiar and so mind-haltingly foreign.

This is wonderful, this is something that everyone wants in their life, this easy closeness with another person. It’s all wrong, though. It’s somehow all completely and utterly wrong.

He doesn’t call Mary the next day or the day after that or the day after that.

He feels awful about not feeling awful about that.

Mary calls him, a week later and instead of demanding an explanation, let’s John know that it was quite nice seeing him, but that she thinks it won’t work out “for obvious reasons” . John wonders when the “obvious reasons” became so apparent to others and not to himself.

\---

Mrs. Hudson slides a newspaper under the door one morning, an old edition, from a year previous. They are on the cover, Sherlock staring into the distance, following the line that John is pointing with his hand. They’re in stark relief against the white of some building and they look so solid and alone, together, that John holds his breath.

John moves; the note that Mrs. Hudson had affixed to the paper floats to the floor, forgotten: “Was thinking of you boys today, come for a cuppa later if you’re up for it.” A nice sentiment, but one that John will never read.

His body somehow finds the couch and he falls into it, paper clutched between sweaty, desperate hands. He’s never seen this photograph and his eyes trace the sharp jut of Sherlock’s draw as his mind transports him back to that day.

Warm, lovely, and a man beaten to death on the pavement.

John does not remember the victim’s name, or the name of the suspect they eventually tracked down. He remembers afterwards, he remembers just after this photo must have been taken. Walking along the Thames with Sherlock, the taller man handing John and iced coffee from a cart and the two of them acting so blindingly normal that it seems now almost dreamlike.

If he could have bottled that moment, if he could have saved-prolonged-kept it, he could use it now, as a balm for the steadily-growing hole in his heart.

He could patch up the ragged tears in his soul.

Three months ago, he would have taken the paper and ripped the photograph to shreds. Now, he finds a pair of shears, carefully crops the photograph and affixes it to the refrigerator with a Speedy’s magnet.

\---

Winter is coming (John laughs at that because he’s watching a show on telly that, nevermind, you wouldn’t understand) and he decides it’s time for a change. That a change he can physically _see_ might be something that he needs.

The surgery has been good both for him and to him, and with the bit of extra cash he’s set aside, he purchased some new furniture, a thrifted-but-updated rug, gives the baseboards a few new coats of paint and retouches the ceiling. New linens on his bed and the colors on the wall change. He strips the upper hall of wallpaper and covers it in a color called “sun-kissed wheat.”

Many of the old newspapers and journals that Sherlock had kept on hand, claiming that one day they would come in useful, go into the bin. John drags a cloth over the windows and a mop over the floor and begins going through Sherlock’s room, donating clothing, boxing up belongings.

Mycroft had offered (almost too kindly) to handle it, but John had refused, choosing to go about erasing parts of Sherlock from the flat on his own. Stacks of nearly folded shirts and pairs and pairs of the same den and color sock go into boxes labeled “charity.” He leaves the room tidied and organized and draws the curtains.

There will come a day when John has to rid the flat of Sherlock’s bed, his science equipment, his bloody harpoon, but it doesn’t feel appropriate just now. If there ever comes a time that it does feel acceptable, John promises himself that he’ll list the items and part with them with little guilt.

‘The man is _gone_ , after all,’ John thinks and rolls his eyes and only hates himself the tiniest bit. This must be acceptance; this must be the acceptance portion of the ride, John muses.

(He does _not_ enjoy the way acceptance feels or fits on his frame.)

It looks brighter in the flat now, almost new. John stands in the kitchen and surveys his work at the end of a long weekend and something rolls off of his shoulders. Not that he’s going to move on, this isn’t something he can move on from but it seems as though much of the soot that has dirtied his slate has been scrubbed clean.

He’s not back to good, but he’s better.

\---

Lestrade comes by the flat and says nothing of the change, but his eyes do widen a bit as he takes in the surroundings. He uncaps one of the beers he’s brought and hands it to John. Neither one of them will say it, but they look forward to evenings like these.

The men drink in silence for a bit and out of nowhere, John begins to laugh. It begins low, slowly and then builds to nearly hiccoughing giggles.

“What?” Greg asks, startled, pulling the beer away from his mouth slowly.

John swallows, staves the mirth that’s suddenly bubbling from him. “I was just thinking... I donated some of Sherlocks clothes and... the thought of a five-hundred quid silk button up on some random bloke...”

Greg gets it.

Greg laughs too.

\---

John dreams of Sherlock once in December, nowhere near Christmas. They’re in a vacuum and there is no sound and John is the one falling and falling.

Sherlock reaching and not finding.

\---

Six-hundred and thirty-five days, fifteen thousand, two hundred and forty hours. (It feels like longer.) John Watson can’t seem to do the math for minutes in his head. Not right now.

The moment that John lays his eyes upon Sherlock Holmes again, he is not shocked, he’s not upset or thrilled or relieved. At the sight of Sherlock Holmes, very fleshy, very _real_ and spectacularly alive, John Watson feels sick. Utterly ill, deep in his bones, in the pit of his stomach. To his credit, he manages to say so.

“I’m going to be sick,” John croaks, pushing the front door closed in the other man’s face with a weak hand. Sherlock stops it with an equally weak hand, pushing it carefully back open.

“I shall explain, but first I believe it’s crucial we get you... sitting,” and he steps through the door and like that he’s back in the hallway of Baker Street. “Upstairs, perhaps?” Sherlock asks and it is laced with impatience and guilt and eagerness.

Blood thrumming in his ears, throat dry, heart just about ready to burst like a supernova, John stands and stares at the wall.

“John?”

John blinks at him and sweeps a shaking (shaking, it’s quivering as though they’re experiencing an earthquake) hand before him as though to say, “Lead the way,” but he says nothing. He has no voice at the moment.

Sherlock’s eyes narrow just a bit and John counts the lines there, notes that there are far more, far more than there had been a year and some months before. John wants to ask him every question he’s ever had, unburden himself of all of the feelings he’s managed to dredge up during the time Sherlock has been dead. He needs to know the story behind every one of those new lines.

But Sherlock has to mount the stairs first, and before Sherlock can climb the stairs, he has to stop staring at John.

It takes a full two minutes and thirty seconds before Sherlock moves. John takes a moment to gather his wits (of which he is not shocked to find he has surprisingly _few_ at this point) and trudges up the steps after him, his head spinning, spinning, nearly spinning right off of his head.

Sherlock isn’t seated when John finally reaches the sitting room. The man is standing, straight-backed, hands in pockets, slowly taking in the flat. “You’ve tidied.”

John blinks.

John thinks.

John-”What!?”

He turns slowly and there’s a small smile on his lips.

“Stop it,” John bites. “Stop it now.”

“I’m... sorry.”

“Stop smiling before I knock it right off of your face. Just stop it.” His chest heaves with the breaths that come out fast, too fast. He’s going to have a panic attack. Dear lord, he’s going to pass out. Breathe, breathe!

Sherlock blinks. “Right... sit,” he advises and John’s eyes flash hot and angry. Pissed off.

“Kindly do not boss me around my flat. You are, after all, _dead_.” That knocks the wind out of his sails and John’s backside hits the couch and he bounces a bit. His index finger stabs the air before him, “You. Are dead.” Because he almost has to be. All of these months, trying to pick up and carry on. They’ve not been for nothing. They’ve _not_ been for nothing.

“As is evidenced by my obvious corporeal presence in the living room of this, 221b Baker Street, I’m very obviously not.”

John growls, “Bite me.”

“Bite you?”

“Sherlock this is... all a bit much, yeah? You think that you’re perhaps going about this all wrong?” John heaves a breath and sags back into the sofa and scrubs his hands across his eyes. “And what does it say about me that I’m not wondering if I’m going insane.”

“You’re not insane, John. This is all very real and-”

“Fucking, Sherlock sodding Holmes, shut your bloody mouth!” John shouts, sitting up straight on the couch, his face blushing hot, hot red. Sherlock, to his credit, does stop speaking and has the presence of mind to look a tad frightened and _immensely_ agitated. “Sit,” comes the demand and the detective takes two strides into the room and folds his body into one of the chairs.

He wants to tell Sherlock what he’s been put through, that he’s the worst person in the world for letting John _mourn_ like this. John has needlessly mourned and that’s perhaps what’s worst about this and he feels cheated and used and less-than.

John says _none of this_ because there’s no will power behind these thoughts; rage for the sake of rage, because Sherlock deserves to have John mad at him. That’s what he _deserves_ right now.

John’s eyes rake over him. Not much has changed; his hair is threaded with a few grays and there is purpled skin on his left hand and there are those lines around his eyes and he’s sitting a bit straighter than he used to, but there he is. Crossed right back over the river Styx looking no worse for the wear.

John isn’t quite sure what the “wear” is but he’s fairly certain that Sherlock wasn’t gone for twenty-one months on an extended holiday. Thank whatever powers that be that are gazing down upon him because Sherlock shuts his mouth and doesn’t say word one. John is glad because it gives him more time to just drink everything in. That is what he feels he’s doing, sucking down a glass of cool water after an eternity in a desert wasteland.

“I imagine you’ve had quite a while to think about what you were going to say to me.”

Sherlock breathes, “Yes.”

“Do you... need another moment?”

“No, John,” and it sounds like _pleading_.

Pursed lips, feeling as though he hasn’t slept in decades and centuries and eons, John Watson nods his head. “Right,” his voice is tight and threaded with relief. “Right, well, tea and then out with it.” John nods, stands, wipes his palms on the front of his trousers and thinks to add. “Out with _all of it_.”

Sherlock swallows and John marvels as the tension leaves his shoulders; the man transforms before him. The light catches the tear tracks on Sherlocks right cheeks and John thinks “Serves him right,” even as he thinks, “I will kill everyone who made him have to go through this.”

“Yes, John,” he sighs and goes boneless, his head lolling against the back of the chair in relief.

\---

Two sugars, one milk for the both of them because John wants to give Sherlock a taste of what he’s been missing. John’s tea-making capabilities were always something that Sherlock had marveled at and quite vocally. John had never been quite sure why because in the grand scheme of things, making a good cup of tea wasn’t that difficult.

Still.

John wants to show Sherlock what he’s been missing. Sherlock watches John move about the room, drawing the curtains, shutting and locking the door (god forbid Mrs. Hudson stumble upon them and have a heart attack) and building a small fire. He waves an alight bit of newspaper up and catches the draft in the floo, wondering all the while how the fuck he’s going to explain what he’s been feeling for the past many months.

“I couldn’t have... come along, then?” John asks, back to the other man, as the fire catches and begins to pop and crackle in the hearth.

There is silence, so much of it. Sherlock clears his throat and says, “No, John.” And then, “Absolutely not.”

John nods, he understands and yet he doesn’t. “Alone, you utter, utter bastard.” Tongue runs over upper teeth and he steels himself for what is going to a long evening of listening to Sherlock speak. He pretends he won’t drink it in with greedy ears, that just to be in his presence again is all he will ever need.

“Moriarty’s criminal network was surprisingly expansive,” Sherlock begins with a note of humor in his voice. “Which I believe I anticipated but, Siberia?” Fingers steepled in front of his mouth, Sherlock launches. “Mycroft’s involvement was crucial and before I continue I’ll apologize on his behalf. He did try and persuade me to find an alternate... means of carrying out this business as not to put you through unnecessary... pain.”

And the thought that Mycroft was a voice of reason in all of this is a little too absurd for him, a little too insane. He falls back on the couch and rubs a hand over his face, disbelieving as Sherlock continues. “He also provided the financial means, of course, but then, you knew that.”

“Stop it, Sherlock, why did you-”

“If James Moriarty's people were not assured that I was indeed dead, he would have murdered Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson and,” Oh and his eyes flash and he makes it a point to connect his gaze with John’s weaker one when he speaks, “You.”

John swallows. John knows this, wants to tell Sherlock he knows this, but somehow also needs to hear the man verify it, hear the words spoken from his lips.

Sherlock’s voice is gruff, more than sandpaper, gravel. “So if you could please suspend your belief that I selfishly left you here alone to mourn a man not dead and understand that my motivations these past months have been driven entirely on the desire for _you_ to remain “of the living,” as they say.”

“Greg and Mrs. Hudson,” John whispers, driving his fists against his eyes. “Jesus.”

Sherlock makes a curt nod and adds, “You.”

John sighs and pulls his hands away, peels his eyes open and it’s all Sherlock. Intense gaze, unruly hair. Everything is Sherlock.

“Every moment, every one, John.” Sherlock breathes. “Do you _understand_?”

“I, Sherlock, it’s not enough but, can you,” John stands and balls, unballs his fist a few times. “Could you, please,” and he motions with his chin and somehow, miraculously, Sherlock understands. He unfolds himself from the chair and stands, awkward before John.

It takes John a moment but he squares his shoulders and takes a step forward and wraps his arms around Sherlock so tightly that he can hear the air as he squeezes it from his lungs. Sherlock’s hands are trapped against his body by John’s arms, but it’s enough, for now.

“Sherlock,” he breathes into the man’s chest and that undoes the moment.

He extricates his arms and winds them arounds John’s back and holds on in a _forever_ sort of way. “Do you _understand_?” he asks once more and there’s the threat of tears in his voice, a million apologies, the whole and complete unravelling of their time apart. There will be time enough for that later, John assures himself. He’d like this moment to last as long as it can, for now.

He is not entirely forgiven; the ache is not entirely gone. The anger still remains and the hurt, but it can all simply wait for a bit. Just a bit.

He buries his face in the crook of Sherlock’s neck, inhales and says, “I do. I understand.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He would say that it’s just like the old days - papers strewn about, random bouts of composing after glancing at a case file, photos tacked to the walls and mirror - except Sherlock is so hushed about it all that it’s startling. John doesn’t want Sherlock to change, would give anything for a bit of crazed pacing, some bullets in the wall to liven things up a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me ages to write. Not proofed as I had a fit of anger and had to get it out of my WIP folder before I outright deleted it.

The contact is not the end of it, the end of anything. It’s not catharsis or a beginning, it’s a bridge in their composition. An evening isn’t enough; it will take days that feel like a lifetime.

It’s three careful days, four planned conversations, twelve cups of tea (between the two of them) before John has heard the whole story. Sherlock spares no detail, going into the intricacies of tracking a hitman through the archives of the Kremlin (“Notoriously unreliable, Soviet records,”) and the pipeline of funds fed to him through Mycroft’s contacts.

“A lot of money, I’d assume,” John says eventually because there’s the pressing need to say something to break up the flow of Sherlock’s words.

Sherlock blinks, nods, sips at his tea. “Flights to Australia, you can’t imagine what the global oil crisis is doing for air travel.” It’s such a startlingly normal thing to comment on that John cringes. He can already feel them slipping back into some semblance of normalcy and he certainly hadn’t intended to make it this easy. He wars with his sense, with his conscience, but finds himself soft and open and willing to accept whatever Sherlock tells him. For the time being, for right now.

There is mention of no fewer than four clearly-executed deaths. Sherlock relates the information as though the notion that he’s killed four men isn’t shocking. Still, it isn’t as shocking to John as it should be, or as it once would have been and that’s a bit uncomfortable. John imagines the detective’s thin fingers wrapped around a meaty neck and swiftly maneuvering a snap, severing the connection at C2 holding on long enough to choke the rest of the life out of a person.

An evil person.

An exceedingly immoral individual who - if allowed to live - would have spared no breath in bringing death upon himself or Sherlock. John rationalizes; easy. Sherlock does not give him the names of these people, only explains how he managed to outmaneuver them.

It’s all so clean, the way he unravels the story for John, a frieze in stunning, sharp relief.

John builds two fires in the elapsed time it takes Sherlock to finish the tale. _Not a tale_ , John reminds. _Nonfiction_.

Sherlock’s eyes flash in the pause he’s created for himself and until this moment it’s been a clinical retelling, peppered with gentle attempts at levity, humor. There has been no emotion forced behind the words because a tale such as this is easier spoken cleanly. John licks his lips and drinks the last dregs of his cool tea.

It’s three careful days, four planned conversations, twelve cups of tea before Sherlock’s internal, carefully patched and concreted dam bursts completely. His previous admission was a simple leak compared to what washes over John in this instance. “The distance created a sort of buffer, you see,” Sherlock rationalizes. “Time and space creating an indelible sort of ache within me, John.”

It’s too poetic, his words and John craves them even as he wishes to ask him to speak plainly. The detective’s eyes won’t meet his, but that doesn’t stop him from staring on, hanging truly on the words. “That adage of distance making the heart growing fonder with absence... I suppose it simply served to make the truth plainer.”

“Hmmm,” it’s sweet and it warms John’s cheeks, settles in the bit of his stomach, causes him to go a bit boneless.

When Sherlock shifts his gaze to land on John’s face, his expression is blank. “It is of course not certain to me that ‘love’ is an actual manifested reality in the body or the mind but if it were, I would be quite sure that I’ve been experiencing it in it’s totality, these past... months.”

There’s nothing but to blink and breathe and process and try not to become too overwhelmed at the welling in his chest or the way his ribs stretch to accommodate the increased beating of his heart. John sits and nearly basks in the honesty of it.

When he says nothing after long moments, Sherlock perches his fingers in front of his lips and looks toward the window, “Take that as you wish, I merely thought it... prudent to tell you.”

“Sod off it, you complete idiot,” John says quietly, the awe in his voice so evidently that Sherlock’s gaze snaps back to his. “You are... a complete and utter, just absolutely mad and... for months Sherlock I-” His mouth falls shut and he figures out just what he wishes to say. “Thank you,” he settles on eventually. “For being the brave one.”

“Brave...” Sherlock tests on his tongue and John waits, let’s the implication bleed through his mind.

John swallows and it is his turn to look out the window; he _feels_ so strongly right now, so many things. No matter how much he wants to balm all of his over, three days isn’t enough to heal him.

“I’m just not there yet.”

\---

Sherlock doesn’t meet Lestrade at the Yard; instead, he insists that John shoot him a text asking him down the local for a pint after his shift is up. It takes an hour, but he responds back in the affirmative. “Could use a pint, or three,” and they set a time.

“I’m not sure this is the best way to go about it,” John breathes, but he’s not calling the shots, doesn’t want to be the one calling the shots.

Sherlock fiddles with the buttons at his wrists, his oxford a bit too large for his frame and John thinks about making him a proper fry up before they head down; Sherlock is even bonier than before, no longer long and lean but bordering on pauperesque. He smooths down his collar in the mirror about the mantle and shrugs a bit, “What other way would you have me do it?”

John has no words as Sherlock slips into a down parka, dons a football cap and turns to glance back at him. As far as disguises go, this isn’t a very intricate one but the sight of Sherlock Holmes in hiking parka and Manchester United cap is so foreign that it actually works.

Sherlock has been back for a week and Mycroft is still trying to cushion the inevitable blow Sherlock will take from the public when he comes back from the dead. Until then, it’s incognito or, what would be more to Mycroft’s liking: flat-arrest.

They both know that’s not an option and John just shrugs back and pulls on his own coat. “I’ll head down there now, you come along in ten?” he posits and Sherlock nods, still gazing at his appearance in the mirror. “And just, just... don’t look anyone in the eye.”

Sherlock gives him an eye roll for good measure and John sets down the stairs, zipping his coat and shoving his hands deep into his pockets when he reaches the street. He’s been cooped up in the flat with Sherlock every evening when he’s home from the surgery. They don’t speak much and when they do it’s perfunctory and Sherlock is positively walking on eggshells and John both knows and appreciates this.

Sherlock relearns the flat, takes things out of storage, doesn’t ask where “everything else is.” He wasn’t naive enough to believe that John would leave his things untouched all of this time and John appreciates that too; it’s as though the detective grasps some semblance of what he’s had to process and deal with and decide upon. Sherlock opens packages that Mycroft sends him without a word, some sort of deal struck, surely, and John doesn’t comment on the posh clothing or the equipment or the other necessities that the postman delivers.

Steadily, over the course of seventy-two hours Sherlock bleeds back into every crevice of the flat, the wood and wallpaper somehow taking on the ghost of his scent once more. Aside from a date on a calendar and unseen wounds and the _silence_ , John could almost pretend that nothing has changed. If he wanted to.

And he doesn’t.

For all his ruminating, he misses the pub by a few storefronts and is forced to double back, shoving his shoulder into the weathered wood of the door when he reaches it. It’s dark inside, musty as a good English pub should be and John eyes the back of Gregory Lestrade, the D.I. draped over a bar stool, shoulders sagging.

Bad day, then.

Bad day about to get monumentally worse. Or better. Depending.

John runs a hand through his hair (and over his face) and trudges up behind the man, lays a hand on his shoulder. “John!” he says, placing his beer back down on the lacquered bar. “What are you having?”

He waves off the offer and throws a thumb over his shoulder, “I was thinking maybe we get a booth back there, yeah?”

Greg is off the stool, drink in hand before John has to explain. “We’re talking about something, then.” And it’s not a question. John moves his head in a nod and sidesteps a group of university kids, slinking back into the shadows (the juxtaposition to Sherlock is not lost on him) until he reaches the booth farthest out of sight.

“Well, right,” Greg says once he’s situated and John pulls out his phone, shoots off a text (to Sherlock’s new number; he’s not memorized or added it to his phonebook yet, isn’t sure if he will) and settles back into the wood. On second thought, John holds up a finger to Greg and disappears back to the bar, returns with a bottle of whiskey (half-full), a pint for himself and two small tumblers.

“Shit, John, what is it?” he asks as John measures them both a finger and slides one in front of the detective inspector.

John takes a long swallow, pours another, drinks that too. As the acrid booze hits his stomach - and he knows it’s too soon for liquid courage - he works up the nerve, “Drink up, Greg, you’re about to see a ghost.”

A parka-clad Sherlock arrives some time later and shifts stealthily into the booth; John leaves the Detective Inspector with the Consulting Detective, leaves them to sort it out, takes a seat at the bar and stares straight ahead thinking of _nothing_.

\---

They return to the flat and say nothing to one another; John mounts the stairs, is nearly in his room when he hears Sherlock mutter, “Good night, John.”

That evening, he dreams of a Sherlock that speaks to him with no voice; he dreams of Sherlock and it’s nearly too much now.

\---

“I believe the words he used were ‘bloody, buggering git,” are the first words that Sherlock speaks in the morning. He’s been lazing about, John can tell. Two empty teacups (and why can’t he simply reuse the first?) on the coffee table and his frame stretched over the worn leather of the sofa.

John doesn’t bother asking ‘What?’ He hasn’t the strength at the moment. There are moments in which he detests Sherlock and moments which he longs for him and he simply can’t bother to figure out which state he’s in at _this_ moment; he doesn’t speak.

“Lestrade, he... I apologized to him,” Sherlock claims by way of explanation and John nods to himself, pouring out a cup of tea, adding he barest dash of milk.

It’s a split-second decision, but John turns his back, takes his tea up to his room and shuts his door.

\---

They are mute for a week. John leading and Sherlock following.

He’s learning that he has to tread lightly just as John is learning that he needs Sherlock to do so.

They move silently around one another, creating a sort of awkward, ghostly waltz and when John finally speaks it’s to thank Sherlock for picking up more tea.

\---

When Mycroft leaks the news it’s a hailstorm of opposing opinions. Lestrade is dogged by the press for a fortnight before he caves and tells a reporter from _The Sun_ to piss off. John finds it frustrating but amusing, people knocking down their door once again, Mrs. Hudson collecting the various trinkets and cards and cookies from the well-wishers who pass by the flat.

The public’s opinion errs on the side of relief and joy, those having claimed Sherlock as false just as quick to jump on the opposite bandwagon. It honestly makes no matter at all; aside from the shocking amount of delicious baked goods they’re forced to bin (“Poison, you see,” Mycroft mentions as though it’s a _fact_ ) there’s not much to be done but wait it out.

And wait they must.

The President of the United States hasn’t done anything for the rest of the world to get up in arms about, the Tube is perfectly functional, the Olympics have come and gone; there is no news cycle other than that of “Sherlock Holmes Back From Dead!”

There is composing: bars of music so melancholy and sedate that John borrows some of Mrs. Hudson’s ear plugs.

There is pacing: the window to the kitchen and back. Not manic, but quick and for hours on end. John sits at the kitchen table and listens to footfall-footfall-footfall until it’s a monotonous drone between his ears.

Sherlock sits in his chair by the fire and reads a tome he’s read a half-dozen times before John walks up behind him and places his hands on his shoulders, not pressing, just lying there, warm and heavy and _present_. It’s something John needs and something Sherlock wants and they don’t mention that three weeks ago, John had his face buried in Sherlock’s neck and was telling him “I understand.”

\---

They wait and wait and wait, waiting for the ramifications of Sherlock’s deeds to be decided upon. The deaths abroad are locked up tight, no likelihood of them being unearthed, discovered, prosecuted. But the body atop St. Bartholomew’s Hospital needs some explaining.

Even Mycroft can’t make the inquisition go away and when Sherlock admits to a magistrate in his chambers, “There isn’t a shred of this tale that you would possibly understand,” scathing, he’s thrown in a cell for seventy-two hours.

And John is back without.

Back at Baker Street utterly alone.

\---

He wakes up many times in the night, each time wanting to refuse himself the terror that’s seized his throat and twisted his body. Palms against scratchy sheets, sweat pooling at the hollow of his throat; John is pained and hot and desperately frightened.

Each and every time it takes him long moments to remember that Sherlock is only in lockup; jailed for being a jackass.

The anger ebbs in slowly and then slams into him - an endless tide - that the man would _put_ himself in this situation again, leaving John without. ‘Had to open your fucking wise gob, you jackass,’ he screams to the detective in his mind. ‘And went and got yourself _taken_ from me and you have no, no, no fucking idea about any of this.’

“And neither do I,” John chokes to himself, to the darkness of three in the morning.

\---

John doesn’t know what happens in the space between Sherlock’s release from lockup and when he emerges from the courthouse; he is in a rumpled Dolce and Gabbana suit that’s just beginning to fit right about the shoulders, his great coat flapping in the late-winter London breeze.

John waits across the street for him, _watches_ as he makes his way across the road (slower now, he walks slower) and up into personal space. “That... took some doing,” Sherlock mumbles and the wind picks up.

“Did it?” John reaches out and turns Sherlock’s collar against the wind. “And?”

“They’ll call me back after they...” Sherlock glances off into the distance, down toward Trafalgar Square and shuffles the slightest bit closer to John. “Mycroft tells me they’re seeing about Lestrade’s reinstatement back to Detective Inspector. Back where he should be, not sodding constable...”

A soft breath slithers its way from between John’s lips. “So Greg said.”

“Hmmm.”

"Everything going back to... the way it should be," John adds as an afterthought, doesn't believe he's saying it at all.

They stand there on the corner of a busy street, see no one and hear nothing and John doesn’t have the courage to mention what these three days have undone within him.

\---

The blog that John has let fall into disrepair is revived and he makes a brief entry regarding his partner’s return. There are _thousands_ of comments on the blog, threads beginning within entries he posted _forever_ ago, a war waged over Sherlock’s veracity.

Each entry caps off at 2,000 comments; the absolute most traffic each entry can sustain.

John is sure to turn off the ability to comment on this entry:

_Sherlock has returned; what you’ve heard is indeed true. Please respect his (and my own, come to think of it) privacy while this is all sorted._

_I appreciate the kind words._

_Dr. John H. Watson._

\---

Sherlock’s fingers trail over the photo of he and John that is still affixed to the refrigerator. Whether John has forgotten about it or has wanted to forget that it’s there, he is unsure but his eyes are drawn to the grayscale of the two of them, back when things were, god, _so perfect_.

It’s eating him up inside not to mention the change in decor but Sherlock remains mute on the subject; John finds he wants him to break, rail at him for the paint color, for the obscenely expensive telly that’s hanging flat and sleek in the corner.

He wants Sherlock to ask where all of his things have gone and if he should reinstate his website. He really would like Sherlock to ask him everything because he can’t begin to say thing one about just about anything.

Sherlock’s nail rounds the edge of the magnet securing the clipping to the metal, smiles. He _smiles_ gently and profoundly and hums, “Hmmmm.”

It’s not within John to hold back the tears.

\---

It’s three long months of manic avoidance-cum-crowding before John actually walks head into him and doesn’t bother stepping back, wraps his arms around Sherlock’s waist and breathes as deeply as his lungs will allow.

\---

When Lestrade is reinstated they go round the pub for a pint with the few people who remained loyal to the man in the interim. There are few people there to begin with and it’s a rather somber gathering until John insists on buying a round of shots.

The consulting detective is quiet but present, sipping at a small tumbler of bourbon on a bench off to the side, out of the way. Sparing no one much thought or effort. But he’s present. That’s more than John can wish to hope for from one instance to the next.

Greg talks of:  
his children  
fishing  
the new flat in Ealing  
football  
the terrible coffee that the Met purchases

No one speaks about those who have wronged him and no one speculates aloud how the next few weeks will likely be some of the most difficult of his life. They drink, they chat, they all pretend.

John is one of the last to leave, Sherlock in tow and it’s when John speaks up, “I cannot picture a more bizarre scene than Lestrade in waders with a pole, reeling in a bloody carp, can you?” The night is crisp with a hint of humidity and when John turns to look up into Sherlock’s face he feels as though the skies have suddenly burst open and flooded him with a deluge.

The fissure that breaks Sherlock open is nearly visible, the laugh nearly coming before the grin and it’s so easy to fall back into all of this, the easy camaraderie, a shared joke. The slight brush of shoulder against shoulder as they walk. The intimacy.

“I missed you,” Sherlock says as their laughter peters out, tossing out his hand for a cab.

Before the taxi even pulls up, John is crowding into his space, lines of laughter morphed into something fierce. Sudden. “God, you can’t say that, you _can’t_ Sherlock. You cannot!” his eyes are darting about, drinking in Sherlock’s face _because he can, because he must_.

Silently startled and pulling a deep breath into his chest, Sherlock murmurs “John?”

And it’s then, with wide eyes and a wildy-beating heart that John stands on his tiptoes and crushes his mouth to the dead-man-living and catches the sob before it heaves from his soul.

“Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock you _can’t_ ,” he repeats against the man’s lips, something like a kiss, something entirely not. His chapped lips against the man’s jawline as the cabbie beeps at them impatiently.

John sobers, straightens, spares him one last glance and walks away without a word. Sherlock takes the cab back, alone.

\---

Back against the wall, sitting on the floor just to the right of the door to John’s room, Sherlock sits.

“I don’t know how to properly forgive you,” John mentions without stopping as he walks into his room and shuts the door quietly. “I’m sorry,” he says to the wood, just loud enough to be heard. “I’m trying but... I didn’t know it wouldn’t be... I didn’t know it would be this hard.”

It _is_ hard; his emotions flex and pull, happy to sad to angry and John can’t rightly say where he stands, definitively. But he’s _trying_.

It’s no matter, not at the moment because Sherlock sits outside of his room for the rest of the evening.

\---

There is coffee brewing when John comes down into the kitchen the next morning and his paper is laid out on the table and Sherlock sits quietly, a large tome open to his right, a piece of toast perched between his fingers and he lifts his chin in greeting to his flatmate.

“Toast?” he asks, quietly and at John’s “Sure,” Sherlock goes about making it.

It’s not about changing; John doesn’t want him to change, doesn’t need him to change. It’s about the effort and the consideration and how he silently begs ‘Sorry’ every time their gaze catches on the other’s.

There is a plate of buttered, jammy bread placed in front of him and John looks up from the ‘International’ section to give his thanks. Sherlock gives him a small quirk of his lips; it’s almost a smile, but not quite.

They have a very, very quiet morning.

\---

The Chief Superintendent is the one to order Lestrade to bring Sherlock in on a case. It’s all quite bizarre, from John’s perspective. They have him filling out official paperwork for “consultation fees” and signing his name (forging Sherlock’s; the man can’t be arsed to sign his own name) more times total than he’s sure he’s ever signed it in his life.

John is forced to confirm his medical credentials while it is confirmed that Sherlock Holmes did indeed attend Cambridge. John isn’t sure _why_ they need these issues verified but when he’s through with the whole process he realizes that it does make this seem just a shade more legitimate. People still treat them with a certain amount of disdain, but for what it’s worth, Sally mutters a “Hello, Doctor Watson, I’m...”

It peters out after that because John can’t seem to care whether she’s sorry or not.

Sherlock stalks about the crime scene as he always had but now with just a few more lines on his face, with more caution to his steps, with a hesitancy that only John notices. It’s as though he knows he’s being tested, that he’s been sized-up and reassessed and it seems to _matter_.

What others think about him now seems to matter and that throws John for a right loop.

\---

He would say that it’s just like the old days - papers strewn about, random bouts of composing after glancing at a case file, photos tacked to the walls and mirror - except Sherlock is so hushed about it all that it’s startling. John doesn’t want Sherlock to change, would give anything for a bit of crazed pacing, some bullets in the wall to liven things up a bit.

John wonders if antisomniferous is a word.

He doesn’t know what he’s thinking when he throws a small glass at the wall, just to hear it shatter.

“Jesus! John!” Sherlock turns hastily, eyes light up in surprise.

John shakes the nonthoughts from his head and watches as the man bends to pick up the chunks and shards, placing them carefully into the bin. He stands and watches as the muscles in Sherlock’s back shift between the expensive fabric of his button up.

John:  
wants  
hates  
needs  
is destroyed

Once he’s sure he’s gotten all of the pieces, Sherlock straightens before him. “What’s this about, then?”

“S’too quiet,” John whispers and lets his head hang, lets it fall forward; Sherlock takes one step, two, until his chest is before John’s vision, something for him to lean against.

\---

It feels learned now, all of this behavior.

It cannot be as it was but that doesn’t stop John from wishing it could be.

Futile, that’s how it feels. Utterly futile.

\---

“It’s been six months,” Sherlock says one evening out of the blue. He’s tuning the strings of his violin _so carefully_ and John is going about making dinner. “Two months ago you kissed me. Nothing has changed.”

John’s heart stops, skips, thrums back to life and hammers hard, catching up on the beats it has missed. “What?”

“Two months ago, hailing that cab after Lestrade’s affair, you kissed me,” eyes flicker up to meet John’s gaze across the room. He’s got a wooden spoon in hand and looks entirely like a fish out of water.

“And?”

“I had no idea... was it out of pain or pleasure or spite,” his fingers work at a tuning peg gently. “Or something else entirely but I’d thought about everything at the time, I’d thought about it all but I didn’t at the time even think to kiss you back.”

There’s a crack, a popple, a hiss, the fire violently cursing into their conversation. John stirs. Sherlock tunes. They both think.

John stirs the sauce and sighs, a self-deprecating laugh, “Right.”

“Might I?” He is not looking at his flatmate, instead running fore and middle fingers down the fingerboard slowly as though he hasn’t a care in the world, as though this isn’t something that’s so monumental that John’s internal organs - all of them at once, not just his heart - leap to his throat.

A startled choke while he clears his throat and moves the wooden utensil back, forth, back, forth. “Might you?”

“Don’t be purposefully obtuse, John,” there’s a hint of that old petulance in his tone but the sound is soft, almost gentle. It sends a very direct thrill down John’s spine. “Might I kiss you,” and there’s a smile there, John can tell. His mouth goes completely dry and his hand wavers hard. “Now,” Sherlock adds, almost as an afterthought.

“I don’t...” know what to say, John wants to claim because he has absolutely no idea. He knows for certain what he wants; none of this is normal, his return, their life together, anything. Not anymore. So it makes perfect sense that John wants to feel him, kiss him, hold him, _tell him_ that he’s the end game...

The be all and end all for him.

Gaze on the sauce, John just stirs, wanting the moment to work itself out; he doesn’t exactly know where to place the effort he feels. The paced footfalls are clear in the staid atmosphere of the flat but John doesn’t turn, doesn’t move except to stir, back and forth and back and forth.

“John,” the voice is low and warm and it’s insane that John wants to cry at a time like this, that he wants so badly to turn around and _touch_ Sherlock, but he’ll shatter. They’ll both shatter. A hand on his shoulder and the burn is right through his jumper, he can manage to see the perfectly manicured nails of Sherlock’s right hand where it’s curved against his body.

It takes him a few swallows to get past the lump in his throat and when he does, he turns, eyes steadfastly on the third-from-top-button on the detective’s shirt. It takes him a breath to make the glance up to Sherlock’s eyes.

“Might I?” Sherlock says again; it should be a whisper, it should be quiet and intimate but his voice is sure, strong, bordering on loud.

The sound of the harsh breath that John blows out is like a gust and it rattles his lips; he licks them as he always does. “I suppose that would be-”

Sherlock is _fast_ , dear god is he ever, one hand around John’s neck (gentle), the other clasped around John’s right wrist where it holds the spoon at his thigh (desperate, shaking) and his lips land on the right half of John’s mouth, a warm press.

The cascade of a breath that Sherlock releases against John’s cheek tickles and his lips quiver the slightest bit open in response, John’s upper in between both of Sherlock’s, slotted together so, so, so-

He can’t help it, not really, never could, but the coursing through his veins, the years and months of missing-and-needing seize up in his chest and strangle at his heart, scrabble in his pulse points and make breathing too difficult. John sucks in a fast, shaky breath, his tongue accidentally peeking out to nudge at Sherlock’s bottom lip.

The other man acts as the catalyst, his mouth moving slowly, letting John play a bit of catch up, his own lips slipping open more, more. John’s left hand maneuvers to Sherlock’s hip, curls in there and settles just as his tongue strokes over the other man’s and oh, ‘you idiot, you were gone for _ages_ for ages and I thought it was going to be forever.’

A mess, a proper one, languid and sweet and if there ever was a moment that John was sure his heart would burst, it is now, it is this very second as Sherlock hums sadly against his mouth and _kisses_ him, presses kisses to the corner of his mouth before maneuvering their mouths back together, open and slick. John has no idea if he’s giving or taking or if it’s acquiescing to everything, but he remains gentle and open. The kiss is easy and _slow_ but passionate and proper and _thorough_.

When Sherlock pulls away, he presses his cheek to John’s and asks, lips so close to his ear that he swears he can feel it against the lobe. “Okay?”

John takes a moment to decide and says, “No.”

Sherlock’s retreat is slow, glancing down to look John in the eye (fear, hurt, oh god, oh, oh) and it’s then that John feels the metaphorical tidal wave within him crash, swallow him up and he drops the spoon in a clatter to the floor, sauce spattering up to stain their trouser cuffs. “No,” he chokes as he presses Sherlock up against the counter, as he presses his hands up into Sherlock’s hair and presses his mouth back to Sherlock’s mouth.

“I’m sorry,” John swears he hears smeared into the side of his neck, but he wouldn’t actually _swear_ to it.

\---

They each go to their own bed. They’re worked up and slightly sweaty; it’s not pleasant but they’re not ready for it yet, they’re not ready.

That doesn’t mean that John doesn’t stay awake most of the evening, wishing that he could slip into Sherlock’s room and sidle up behind him for the night.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t _ache_ for it.

His fists ball and unball, wanting to grasp at something or recalling the feeling of Sherlock’s hair carding through his fingers.

\---

Sherlock isn’t downstairs when he awakens and it’s honestly a trial not to knock on the door to his room. Doctor John Hamish Watson, RAMC has absolutely no idea what on earth to do.

But he’s good at sighing in resignation, so he does just that.

John takes a bit of time for himself; a long shower, a nice, straight-razor shave, a bit of blogging and reading a few chapters in the latest Grisham. He’s alone, doesn’t _feel_ alone and it’s just fine. Two cups of coffee and two pieces of toast and he manages to somehow fall back to sleep in front of the hearth in his pajamas.

Sundays forgive such dalliances as this.

When he comes to - stiff in the neck, book on the floor - Sherlock is in the kitchen, face against the microscope, a mug of coffee at his right. He notes the dying fire and tosses on a small log, stretches in his chair and glances at the window.

“Afternoon,” Sherlock mentions and it would be offhand if not for the waver in his voice.

A cracking of the neck, stretching of the limbs and “I shouldn’t be falling asleep in chairs, too old for that bit now, aren’t I?” John stands, grabs up his coffee mug and makes his way through to the kitchen for another cup.

There’s a pause at the threshold and it’s a gamble - Sherlock gazing at his cultures, nothing spoken about, nothing resolved from last night - and John threads a hand into his hair as though he’s petting at him. “Good afternoon, then.”

\---

Lestrade calls Sherlock now, again, again. He takes the calls with just the slightest bit more patience than he used to. He takes the _calls_ and that’s something. There is texting, but not nearly as much.

\---

They do not snog.

They kiss and they linger on it, but they do not snog.

They spend hours on the sofa and in Sherlock’s bed just kissing and petting and stopping before they work themselves up to the point that going further is inevitable.

It’s all quite lovely, really, if John thinks about it.

\---

They don’t just happen upon sex, they don’t just fall into bed, no matter how much John would have preferred it. He’s not good with the pre-sex talking, and not wonderful with speaking about the logistics. He’s totally shit when it’s anything more, no matter how smooth anyone thinks him. Never has he responded to ‘Will you be staying over?’ in the correct way.

Not that it’s detracted from his, well...

Sherlock brings it up though John has been thinking about it for ages, wondering about it. Hoping for it. “You’ve never indulged in-”

“Don’t say it, Sherlock, it makes me seem-”

“Right, right, well,” he crosses his legs just as he steeples his fingers beneath his chin in the high-back chair. “I suppose that in most cases that this just... sorts itself out.” Sherlock _needs_ to talk about this.

The laugh that bubbles can’t be helped. “In my experience-”

John doesn’t intend for any other words to follow but the vehemence in Sherlock’s eyes stop him cold. “Can I... will it...” John shakes his head and feels a cold dread settle in the pit of his stomach and he’s felt something before but never like this.

Never like this.

“Oh bollocks,” John has his face in his hands and he can’t summon the strength to look up at his flatmate. “You’re an utter asshole, you know? Those... months, Sherlock... I more than completely... oh, you...”

“Say it to me, John,” Sherlock says desperately, as though he’s never heard it before and, well, perhaps he never has. Sherlock doesn’t exactly know how to ask properly, but it’s fine. It’s not as though he doesn’t already know, as though he hasn’t already _deduced_ (and fuck right out _that_ verb) it.

“Sherlock....”

The other man simply sits, alert, nerves on end, back as straight as a board and he’s so serious. Oh, oh, oh...

“Goddamn you utter idiot, I haven’t loved you all along but I’ve, I’ve... for a good portion of all of this insanity, I’ve...” John scrubs a hand through his hair and then down roughly against his jaw. “Can’t help it, you... never could, really, this was coming all along, falling into it, with you, falling... Sherlock...”

There is no part of John that doesn’t wish to say it, no part of him that doesn’t want to or beg to. Between the need and want, a chasm between the courage and cowardice. This is something that John’s conscience screams with, his soul begs telling.

It all feels _startling_ like one might believe a tragic love story would; the drama, the fast beating hearts, the _elongated silence_.

“Fuck it all, I love you, alright, is that alright? I’m in, goddamn it all you, I’m in love with you Sherlock Holmes and that’s all, that’s all of it... really.” John throws up his hands and then buries his face in them again because is something he’s never done. It’s all fresh and new and so much more _painful_.

And Sherlock clips out, after long moments of _crushing_ silence, clinical and hard, “Months I was away from you... sentiment, John, something I was never particularly adept with. Now, even, I can’t... the years before you, you understand there was no one. Now, with you, there will be no other. Is that archaic? It is... I should, I should,” Sherlock searches for the words.

But John is swelling and moving towards him, hands on his face, “I’ve just wanted to fall apart, all of this time. You fucking idiot, you hurt me, you hurt me now, and-” John kisses him soundly, tongue peeking out to just brush against Sherlock’s. “This hurts too but it’s better, it’s brilliant and I-”

“Please,” Sherlock begs and John needs more in this instant, in this very instant.

“I will never be without you again, do you understand?” John takes his face between his hands and stares him in the eye. Sherlock stares at him, ice-water eyes warm and yielding. “I need to- do you understand me Sherlock?” he repeats himself almost desperately.

Sherlock begins to stand, unfurling himself and when he’s completely through he looks down into John’s eyes and says, “Yes.”

And Sherlock leads on, through the kitchen, to the hall and finally, the bedroom.

“I can’t say I’ve forgiven you,” John mentions when they reach Sherlock’s bedroom; it takes him a bit for his eyes to adjust to the light. The other man closes the door quietly behind him, a note of finality resonates.

Sherlock pulls back the bedclothes neatly, folding it at a perfect acute angle, one edge of the fitted sheet peeking out to greet him. His eyes don’t meander, he doesn’t look up but he says, “Hmm. Maybe you don’t have to.”

“What?” John asks, voice falling to a timber more suitable for the darkness in the room.

Sherlock pauses and then turns to face John completely. “Is it necessary? In this moment, that everything is forgiven?” His eyes shine, seem to pick up on every little glint of luminescence left in the room. “Am I not to... touch you before everything is properly forgiven? That could take _years_ John,” Sherlock nearly begs, carefully stepping around the bed to stand before him.

“It could take ages, it could never happen at all...” he whispers, steps right into John’s personal space and grasps John’s hands in his. “I am _sorry_.”

John stares at the hollow of Sherlock’s throat and _breathes_ , gently extricates his hands from Sherlock’s and wrings them, brings them to the man’s shoulders, curls his thumbs in. “No, no, no I don’t need to-” And then John is kissing him, slowly, languidly, his hands on broad, lean shoulders as Sherlock leans down just a bit to meet him.

Sherlock’s arms are an anchor and John wants to do everything all at once. He pushes and pulls and gasps and sobs and it’s only strong hands cupping his face that slow him down, set the pace. “We’ve all night,” Sherlock promises. “We’ve forever,” he nods, forehead to forehead and begins working at the buttons of John’s shirt.

“And it’s alright, if it’s not now, if I can’t forgive you, if I...”

“I’ll wait as long as you like, for as long as I have,” he says, slipping the buttons through the gives, undoing the wrists and pushing the shirt down John’s shoulders. “All the way to the very end.”

John sighs and they stand together as Sherlock undoes his own shirt, making quick work of disrobing. “Alright,” John croaks and takes a moment to run his teeth over Sherlock’s collarbone.

It goes on like that for a time, hands maneuvering around one another to tug at buttons and wheedle at zips; there is quite a bit of stopping to kiss as well, Sherlock smiling against John’s mouth as the doctor’s hands curve and ply and touch. Shoulder blades, the small of his back, sliding into trousers to test the curve or his arse. John is entirely tactile and silent for long moments, Sherlock’s mouth open and wet against his shoulder.

They’re both hard, nearly painfully so, but they’ve all night, they really do and they have to get this _right_. They have to do this properly for all of the times they’ve arsed it all up. This, _this_ will be done with care and with purpose and when Sherlock scoots himself up on the bed, back nearly against the headboard, John manages to follow as though it’s the most natural process in the world.

As though it’s been tried and tested and this is what their bodies have been meant for all along. John lays his head upon the vacant pillow and stares at Sherlock’s hip. There are fingers in his hair, petting through, nails glancing against scalp and as if of their own volition, John’s legs shift over to rest against Sherlock’s.

It’s exceedingly nice in the dark, in the quiet, letting their arousal ebb and flow, nothing to rush. They simply are, together, in bed.

Neither one of them can say how long it is before John’s hand is at Sherlock’s waist, teasing gently against the skin there; a harsh breath and Sherlock’s eyes slip closed, the hand in John’s hair stuttering and recovering. The palm of his hand presses lower, rubbing over the outline of the man’s cock, gently outlining, testing the heat. John marvels at it, eyes wide, mouth suddenly completely dry.

It’s only natural that his hand meanders beneath the elastic waistband just as Sherlock arches, his pants rucking down around his hips.

There’s no question, no time to. He shifts up and over and John swipes his tongue gently along Sherlock’s prick, gathering the precome and _tastes_. God, the man takes his time, experimenting, pressing open mouthed kisses along his cock, laving his tongue over the length of vein beneath. Sherlock’s fingers curl and fist in his hair but he’s content to wait, to let John set his own pace, to allow the man to experiment on his body.

John twists this way and that, moving his hands along the glans delicately while his mouth works in a counter rhythm, lower. Everything about it is ‘supernova expanding, imploding’ to Sherlock and he sings his praises in grunts, in groans, in “Oh christ _yes_ ’s.

Filthy, the noises he’s making. And John is moving so slowly, inquisitively, as though he’s cataloging Sherlock’s reactions, is quantifying how to best please him with the moves he will make next. By the time John pulls away from his cock -messy, wet, wanting - Sherlock has slumped down far enough in the bed that the covers are mussed, the pillow is on the floor and he is completely undone.

With the back of his hand, John swipes at his mouth. “Was that-”

“Yes,” Sherlock croaks, moves a hand to tug at John’s shoulder until he’s level with him on the bed. “Perfect,” and he kisses, the muted tang of precome and sweat, John and Sherlock, all together, now. He’s never moved with less purposeful direction in his life, John thinks, even if he knows where this is going to end.

There’s no room in his brain for thinking about _how_ to get there; he just lets his heart toss him this way and that and gives into the whim. It is _startlingly_ easy to make love to Sherlock because he is in love with Sherlock.

When pale, cool fingers slip beneath the waist of his pants, John shakes and bucks, doesn’t for one moment think of holding back the sounds that pour out of him. John places his face in the crook of Sherlock’s neck, lips to his throat and feels as the sound pours out of him as well, delicate vibrations against the paper skin of his mouth. He’s drinking Sherlock, eating his pleasure as he slides his fingers down the length of John’s cock to glance over his testicles. “We’ve all night,” Sherlock reminds and tucks in to _take his time_.

John nose presses in against Sherlock’s Adam’s apple as the man jerks him casually but possessively, other hand curled beneath John’s pillow and up around his shoulders. It’s nothing poetic, it is so far removed from a musician handling his instrument that it is laughable; it’s very nearly perfection and that’s something else entirely mad.

 _Mad_.

Because in Sherlock arms, tucked in and being pleasured, John feels safer than he ever has in his life. He never, ever, ever wants to leave. “Never want to leave,” and he says so.

“You never have to,” Sherlock says calmly, twisting his wrist on the upstroke. John’s hands find purchase on Sherlock’s chest at his sides, his waist. The torture is sweetly unbearable and when Sherlock pulls his hand off and motions for John to lean back he almost doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to let go.

“Back, now,” Sherlock hums gently, lips to his forehead as it creases in pleasure-pain.

Hands bracket his pectorals and Sherlock moves down John’s body - back arched, mouth open and panting - and when he reaches his cock, he leaves a wet, open-mouthed kiss on the head whilst simultaneously gazing up at the doctor. “Are you with me?” comes the hushed question as Sherlock meanders up a bit, pressing kisses next to John’s navel.

“Yes,” John breaths and watches on as the detective slides his cheek down along his inner thighs.

There is something there that is beyond tender and so magnanimous that John shatters with it, is sure he’ll be pulled under and drown. Christ in heaven he _loves_ this man; he’s not sure he’ll ever find forgiveness but it will be no hindrance in how he will love this man.

Sherlock _swallows him whole_. He’s never been that far gone before, swallowed nearly to the root, wrapped up in tight, silken heat. John’s fingers fly down to feel at Sherlock’s curls, they don’t find purchase or pull, they just touch. Sherlock keeps at him, runs his tongue around the glans before swallowing him fully again and yes, John thinks about death from pleasure.

Stripped bare and complete beneath him, he’s so naked. “Sherlock,” comes the keen and his teeth grate against one another but the other man can read him, he knows and so he slides up John’s body, lightning fast and presses open mouths together.

Their cocks slot against one another and Sherlock stills and lets John rut violently against him. Sherlock doesn’t bother reminding him of the hours they have left in the evening, just moves his tongue against John’s and wraps him up tightly.

“Jesus, jesus, christ oh god Sherlock,” he manages into the other’s mouth as he comes hotly between their stomachs.

“Yes,” claims Sherlock and follows him over shortly, coming against stomach and chest and very nearly chin. His mouth remains against John’s as he goes slack and sidles up on his side with John’s chest still pressed against his own.

Sweat on brows and Sherlock presses the doctor’s face into the crook of his neck as they both heave in breath after breath.

“We’ve all evening,” Sherlock breathes and John perks up his lips just the slightest bit and rests over Sherlock’s pulse point.

\---

John aches for days afterwards. He feels the pulling in his thighs and his back and remembers how Sherlock tended to his body and how he reciprocated. He’ll feel Sherlock between his legs for weeks, the rest of his lifetime.

The ache in his _heart_ lessens, bit by bit. It unfurls in his chest when Sherlock’s hand meets his over the tea or the man follows him up to his room in the evenings (not always, but often.) They grow and change, they solve cases and they gray at the temples. They do all of this together.

In the evenings, laying side by side, Sherlock has to remind John that he’ll never leave again, if only to get the use of his arms back for John is gripping him so tightly.

And it is in the morning, years and years down the road in a cottage in Sussex that Sherlock lopes in with a particularly vicious bee sting and John finally forgives him.


End file.
